The highs and lows of refurbishing a house…
A diary of everything involved along the way!
It’s here!
Jan 14th
The day has finally arrived….
Our new kitchen is in the building – in bits though!
The new room is nearly ready to have the bits fitted and with luck, will acquire floor tiles & necessary plumbing tomorrow with the kitchen going in next week.
All building work has now been completed; walls & ceiling have been plasterboarded (“dry walled”) and joints taped/skimmed; electrics are all done; radiator replaced; and the ex-dining room floor levelled with a “underlay” course of tiles to bring it to the same height as the utility room floor.
More photos to come…!
First challenge of 2010!!
Jan 2nd
After spending most of today using one, I’m convinced chemical paint strippers should carry more of a health warning: “do not use if currently alive” or “full-body protective clothing & breathing apparatus must be worn before opening” might do the trick!
We’ve been in the process of restoring the stair case back to more of a wood-like state than it’s previous 1970’s yellowed white look, and today have finally turned onto the home straight.
Unfortunately removing the last few bits of paint has required the use of a powerful paint stripper, advertised to strip all layers of paint back to bare wood in one application.
It doesn’t quite work that well in reality but has done a pretty good job, leaving only a trace of paint to be removed via a palm sander & by hand.
The rest of the wood’s already been stripped using a small armoury of electric sanders… Unfortunately you can’t quite squeeze a belt sander into the corners, between banister rails or into the other assorted little gaps 
I’ve definitely had enough of clearing up sawdust though – will be glad when this bit’s done!!
Lack of updates….
Dec 23rd
Just a quick apology for the complete lack of any updates over the last few weeks.
We haven’t given it all up as a bad idea, but have just been busy getting things done.
I’ll post a fuller update later but for now here’s a quick pic of the rather wintery view we currently have!
Progress!
Nov 23rd
Things are moving forwards nicely so far this week – and it’s only Monday!
Lots of painting is being done, with vast quantities of raw plaster being covered with 1st coats of paint.
While paint’s going up downstairs I’m taking advantage of a few spare floor boards that had been left in the loft to replace a couple of cracked & damaged boards in key areas – upstairs landing & hallway!
It’s been a while since I exercised my carpentry skills but am starting to think it’s something I should do more often.
Problem board removed:
Needless to say, they were not all quite so easy to remove & replace. Seems that whoever had installed the house’s central heating had taken a few shortcuts and fitted heating flow/return pipework right at the top of the joists, immediately below the boards.
As a result cutting boards over the joists was a bit of a non-starter as there wasn’t enough clearance to cut the board without cutting the pipes, and as I didn’t want to create a water feature upstairs I ended up removing the board piece by piece to reveal the pipes – creating enough room to cut the board !
Replacement boards (from a convenient collection of spare boards left in the loft!) were trimmed to size, and the fit checked.
Job done – boards replaced & screwed down. Not worried about the mismatch in colour as we’re sanding back & refinishing the floors throughout…!
Everyone should get one of these tools – fantastic bit of kit for cutting, sanding or scraping in confined spaces.. not too expensive either.
Busy week ahead…!
Nov 20th
Just a quick update to say that a busy week is coming up…
Progress today includes lots of ground work to prepare the way – getting a couple of rooms nearly ready to finish off when a floor sander arrives on monday!
Window sills have been painted & coving “installed” in both main bedrooms. Tomorrows job will probably need to be painting said coving, along with a freshly prepared radiator & removing all upstairs carpets!!
Finally, we’ve just about lined someone up to do battle with the garden. It’s a job that’s at the end of a long list of things that need doing but needs to be done…
Watching paint dry…?
Nov 19th
… we’d happily take watching paint dry over watching plaster dry out.
Paint never seem to take that long to dry to the point that you can move on and do something with the wall. Fresh plasterwork on the other hand seems to take forever to properly dry out!!!
Ah well… plenty more to be doing…
Decorating progress
Nov 19th
Now the plaster’s done, it’s time to crack on with the rest of the house.
The first couple of coats of paint have been applied to the main bedroom to seal & cover the newly dry plaster, and this weekend’s job is to start getting the proper top-coats of paint done along with all the woodwork, window sills, skirting, door frames etc.
We’ve also been getting on with fitting coving to the nearly completed bedroom 2, and are in the progress of lining up various quotes for flooring downstairs & removal of an unwanted wall!
Plasterwork finally done!
Nov 17th
Reached a bit of a milestone over the last weekend – all of the replastering we needed to do for the moment has now finally been completed.
The Lounge has now been finished, along with the hall, staircase walls and upstairs landing walls!
The biggest benefit of this work being finished is that it means we can start to actually decorate the rooms now – and hopefully the lounge can start to look slightly less like a building site, and more like a room.
As a quick reminder of why we need to do this, this photo was what the stair walls (and the hall / upstairs walls) used to look like….
They now look more like this… which even with bare plaster are a vast improvement over heavily ridged Artex!
More mountains moved!
Nov 8th
Great progress today – starting to feel like the house is slowly coming together now.
Lounge plastering is well underway; bedroom 1 has had all of the remaining mess/carpet tape removed along with the first coat of paint on the replastered walls & ceiling and the remaining paintwork in bedroom 2 completed.
We’ve also made a bit of a 
positive discovery – all of upstairs bar the ensuite extension has good quality floorboards throughout rather than chipboard.
Does mean that we need to hire a floor sander for longer than thought but also means we don’t need to recarpet everywhere!
A quick test of the varnish we’re looking to use seems to have resulted in a nice finish on sanded boards – which is good even if it does seem to need 3 coats!!
Next steps are to finish off the bedrooms and to get the lounge painted once the plasterer’s finished.
Lots more to do throughout however!!!!